


The Locket

by MrProphet



Category: Bagpuss
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 12:47:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10697328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	The Locket

_“Once upon a time_   
_Not so long ago_   
_There was a little girl and her name was Emily_   
_And she had a shop._

_“It was rather an unusual shop because it didn't sell anything_   
_You see, everything in that shop window was a thing that somebody had once lost_   
_And Emily had found_   
_And brought home to Bagpuss_   
_Emily's cat Bagpuss_   
_The most Important_   
_The most Beautiful_   
_The most Magical_   
_Saggy old cloth cat in the whole wide world._

_“Well now, one day Emily found a thing_   
_And she brought it back to the shop_   
_And put it down in front of Bagpuss_   
_Who was in the shop window fast asleep as usual_   
_But then Emily said some magic words:_

_“‘Bagpuss, dear Bagpuss_   
_Old fat furry cat-puss_   
_Wake up and look at this thing that I bring_   
_Wake up, be bright_   
_Be golden and light_   
_Bagpuss, Oh hear what I sing.’_   
_“And Bagpuss was wide awake_   
_And when Bagpuss wakes up all his friends wake up too_   
_The mice on the mouse-organ woke up and stretched_   
_Madeleine, the rag doll_   
_Gabriel, the toad_   
_And last of all, Professor Yaffle, who was a very distinguished old woodpecker_   
_He climbed down off his bookend and went to see what it was that Emily had brought.”_

“Well, well, well,” the old woodpecker said. “It looks like a locket.”

“What’s a locket?” Janey Mouse asked.

“Is it like a rocket?” Eddie Mouse added.

“Can you put it in your pocket?” Charlie Mouse wanted to know.

“Nyeh, nyeh, nyeh. You silly mice. No, it is neither a rocket nor something for your pocket. You wear it around your neck, on a chain, like this one here.”

The mice crowded around and looked the locket over. “How do you fasten it?” Jenny Mouse wondered.

“It should have a clasp,” Yaffle explained, “but it looks like it was broken. No doubt that was how it got lost in the first place.”

“Maybe,” Madeleine allowed. “Mice; will you back away a little so that I can see it. Thank you.” With a clear line of sight she looked the locket over carefully. “Look at the dents in the locket,” she said. “It’s as though someone stood on it.”

“When it was lying in the street?” Bagpuss asked.

“On purpose,” Madeleine replied. “And I don’t think the chain broke by accident either. I think whoever owned this tore it off.”

“Fiddlesticks and flapdoodle!” Yaffle declared. “Why would anyone tear off and stamp on such a lovely piece of jewellery.”

“I think the answer to that lies inside the locket,” Madeleine said. “Can you open it mice?”

The mice hurried around, pushing and pulling, but the locket would not budge.

“No, no, no!” Yaffle declared. “Careful, you mice. It’s a delicate mechanism. You must fetch the watchmaker’s tools and the jeweller’s glass from the third shelf and gently remove the hinges of the cover.”

Obediently, the mice scrambled up the shelves to fetch the tools. They dragged the pouch of watchmaker’s tools down with a ‘Heave! Heave! Heave!’ and many a bump, but Lizzie Mouse and Willie Mouse carried the jeweller’s glass carefully between them.

“Very good,” Yaffle applauded them.

"Yes, mice,” Madeleine agreed. “You should always be careful with anything made of glass.”

“Now, prop it gently on this pile of books so that one of you can look through it and guide the others,” Yaffle directed them.

Charlie Mouse lay down on the book so that he could watch, while Janey Mouse and Eddie Mouse handled one of the tiny screwdrivers.

“It’s a locket,” Lizzie Mouse warbled, and the other mice joined her in song:

“It’s a locket,  
We’ll unlock it,  
We will open it pop, pop, pop.  
We will mend it,  
We’ll unbend it,  
We will polish it up, up, up.”

“We will polish it up, up, up,” Eddie Mouse finished, as the last of the screws slipped free of the hinge and the locket fell open with a tinkle of broken glass.

“Glass! Glass! Glass!” The mice cried, scattering back behind the books.

“Nyeh, nyeh, nyeh,” Yaffle laughed. “No need for panic. Just bring a scrap of paper to wrap the pieces in.”

The mice did as he suggested and Yaffle picked up the tiny shards of glass in his hard, wooden beak. Once they were safely folded away and disposed of, everyone turned their attention to the open locket. In one side of the case, where the glass had once covered it, was a battered old photograph of a man. He wore a dark suit and had short, curly hair and long moustaches. In the other side was a short lock of dark hair.

“A keepsake,” Madeleine said. “Given to a girl by her dashing beau, and thrown aside when he proved himself false.”

“What do you mean, ‘false’?” Charlie Mouse asked.

“It means that he lied to her,” Madeleine said. “He made her a promise that he never kept. I can tell you a story about a man like that, if you like, but I’ll have to ask Bagpuss to imagine the pictures for us. Can you do that, Bagpuss?”

“I think so,” Bagpuss told her.

“Will you need a thinking cap?” Gabriel asked.

“No, I don’t think so. But if the mice could put the locket down in front of me, I think that would help.”

The mice pulled the locket over and Bagpuss began to think very hard, and when Bagpuss thinks things, his thoughts appear above his head. At first, his thoughts were just a blur, but then Madeleine started to tell her story.

“Once, not so long ago and not very far from here, there lived a girl named Sally. Sally was bonny and bright and beautiful. Her hair shone and her smile could light up a room, and her parents loved her and her brothers loved her and all of the village loved her. She had a great many friends and when she grew up a great many of the men she had known as boys wanted to marry her, but each time they asked her she would shake her head and look away.

“Then, one day, a man came into town. He was a traveller, a land agent he said, and he was so handsome that before he had been around for a day he was the talk of all the town. He settled himself at the inn which Sally’s father ran and there he bought drinks for the local lads and quizzed them about which local families might want to sell their land. He was free with his money and clever and well-spoken, and never a night went by when he did not have a gaggle of girls about him in the saloon bar, but it seemed that he had eyes only for Sally.

“At first, Sally could barely bring herself to speak to the handsome stranger, but she was smitten to her core and slowly he won her over. At last, she agreed to be his wife and the whole village celebrated the forthcoming wedding.

“The day of the wedding dawned and all the villagers turned out at the church to see Sally wed, but although she drove around and around, each time her brother would appear at the church gate and shrug helplessly to let her father know that the groom had not appeared.

“At last, everyone went home. That was when they found out that all of their houses had been broken into, that all of their farms had been raided and all of their valuables taken away.

“The men raged and the women wailed and the girls who had hung upon the stranger’s words made excuses for him, but Sally just went up to her room and wept, and poured out her heart to her little rag doll.

“And from that day, Sally lost her brightness, and her smiles, when they came at all, no longer lit the room around her. And she took his presents to her, the few that she still had, and cast them into the river, never to see the light of day again.”

Madeleine fell silent and hung her head; she looked very tired.

Without a word, Yaffle climbed up to the shelf where the Mouse Organ stood. He opened the doors and took out a music roll, which he dropped into the top of the organ. He nodded to the mice.

Charlie Mouse stood up and spread his arms, but one more look at Madeleine told him not to make his usual announcement. Instead, the mice began to pump the organ without speaking, so that only the music – mixed with the notes of Gabriel’s banjo – broke the silence.

And then a voice rose in song:

When I was a young man, I hadn’t a penny,  
“When shall we marry?” my Molly would say.  
But I was a wise man and said to my darling,  
“Love that is true love will not fade away.”

Oh, the youth of the heart,  
And the dew in the mornin’.  
You wake, and they’ve left you,  
Without any warnin’.

I went to America looking for money,  
I worked all the day and I slept all alone.  
The sweet silver dollars I saved for my darling,  
To clothe her in satin and make her my own.

Oh, the youth of the heart,  
And the dew in the mornin’.  
You wake, and they’ve left you,  
Without any warnin’.

I came back to Ireland, my pockets a-jingle,  
And the wedding bells rang as I came down the street.  
“Oh, where is the colleen I’ve come back to marry?”  
I asked the first neighbour I happened to meet.

Oh, the youth of the heart,  
And the dew in the mornin’.  
You wake, and they've left you,  
Without any warnin’.

“Your love has grown weary of keeping her kisses,  
And learning a song that will never be sung.  
This morning, your Molly has married another,  
A penniless man with a heart that is young.”

Oh, the youth of the heart,  
And the dew in the mornin’.  
You wake, and they've left you,  
Without any warnin’.

So all you young lovers all ready to marry,  
Remember my story and mind what I say.  
For I was a wise man, and now I am sorry,  
The wisdom of winter is madness in May.

Oh, the youth of the heart,  
And the dew in the mornin’.  
You wake, and they've left you,  
Without any warnin’.” 

The organ fell silent, the strings of the banjo grew still. Madeleine and Gabriel and the mice, and even Bagpuss, stared at Yaffle. The old woodpecker turned and shuffled away.

Quietly, the mice came down again. They took the locket and carefully tapped the dents out of the case. They fixed the screws back into the hinges, then polished the gold until it gleamed. They took the picture and the lock of hair and put them to one side.

At last, Janey Mouse went over and took Yaffle’s wing. “Are you alright?” she asked softly.

“Yes, yes, yes,” Yaffle replied. “But just because I am old does not mean that I have not loved, if not well, then too wisely.”

“Put the locket in the window,” Bagpuss told the mice. “I think that we could all use some sleep.”

And so the mice pushed the locket into the window, although they knew that no-one would see it and come in to collect it, because it had not been lost but discarded deliberately.

 _“Bagpuss gave a big yawn, and settled down to sleep_  
_And of course when Bagpuss goes to sleep, all his friends go to sleep too_  
_The mice were ornaments on the mouse-organ_  
_Gabriel and Madeleine were just dolls_  
_And Professor Yaffle was a carved wooden bookend in the shape of a woodpecker_  
_Even Bagpuss himself once he was asleep was just an old, saggy cloth cat_  
_Baggy, and a bit loose at the seams_  
_But Emily loved him.”_


End file.
